Philippore Land

By Lim Han Ming

An unemployed university graduate girl and an Occupy Wall Street terrorist leave in their wake a string of violent murders and newspaper headlines that catch the imagination of the Depression-struck Singapore. Singaporeans are proud to have been held up by them; to their victims, the duo is doing what nobody else has the guts to do. To the law, the two are terrorists who deserve to be gunned down where they stand.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Nov 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466931435

Lim Han Ming

The future was hopeless. What a frustrating world! Singapore has a lot of people, six million to be exact. But what happens when there aren’t enough good jobs to go around and a lot of people wind up at the bottom, that’s what. In this powerful and riveting novel, literary phenomenon Lim Han Ming unflinchingly exposes the inner-workings of unemployment and foreign talent in the twenty-first century, and reminds us of the passions and malice that office politics can provoke. When an organisation sacks an employee, the event sends unforeseeable shockwaves through the lives of three people who are chained to the events. The Sacking shows how one’s sacking can change the way people think about how they live, what they want, and what they believe forever. An unflinching examination of the human heart's capacity for sorrow, joy, redemption, vengeance and endless gradations in between.

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© Copyright 2012 Lim Han Ming.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-3143-5 (e)

Trafford rev. 11/12/2012

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In the middle of the Great Depression in Singapore in 2020, Occupy Wall Street Terrorist (OWS) Kwek Chee Meng and Tham Shin Yi meet when Chee Meng tries to steal Shin Yi’s mother’s car.

Shin Yi, who is bored by her job as a jobless university graduate is intrigued with Kwek Chee Meng, and decides to take up with him and become his partner in crime.

They do some holdups, but their amateur efforts, while exciting, are not very lucrative.

The duo’s crime spree shifts into high gear once they hook up with Chee Meng’s older brother Chee Wee and his wife, Mui Teng.

The women dislike each other on first sight, and their feud only escalates from there: shrill Mui Teng has nothing but disdain for Chee Meng, Chee Wee and Shin Yi while Shin Yi sees Mui Teng’s flighty presence as a constant danger to the gang’s well-being.

Chee Meng and Shin Yi turn from pulling small-time heists to robbing rich foreigners. Their exploits also become more violent until it reaches the point of Chee Meng murdering a police officer.

A raid later catches the outlaws off guard, mortally wounding Chee Wee with a gruesome shot to his head and injuring Mui Teng. Chee Meng and Shin Yi barely escape with their lives.

With Mui Teng sightless and in police custody, police tricks her into revealing the gang’s whereabouts and Angel Abi Chua who was up until now still only an unidentified suspect and is an OWS terrorist.

Apparently Angel Abi Chua is also branded a China strangler who murdered China students on campus and one China born table tennis player.

Shin Yi’s mother strikes a bargain with the police: in exchange for leniency for Shin Yi, she helps set a trap for the Chee Meng and Angel Abi Chua.

Police locates Shin Yi, Chee Meng hiding at the house of the mastermind OWS terrorist, Angel Abi Chua.

When Chee Meng and Angel Abi Chua stop on the side of the road to help Shin Yi’s mother fix a flat tire, the police in the bushes open fire and riddle them violently.

Philippore Land

Richard Sangalang

Kwek Chee Meng

Shin Yi Tham

Kwek Chee Wee

Mui Teng

Angel Abi Chua

Zakiah Tham

Prologue

I, first heard about ChinkaPhilippore as Philippore Land was originally known, when I was working as programme manager of the Mediacorp, a gorgeous million dollar production company in Caldecott Hill Singapore. It was late 2010 and Mediacorp’s CEO Shawn Seow told me that he needed to borrow our box-office takings to produce a new film by Lim Han Ming, a Singapore writer and director. Assuming this was something like normal practice, Mediacorp coughed up. Six months later, Mediacorp had gone bankrupt. The story of Philippore Land’s production, from script development to distribution to exhibition has been for me a salutary example, a tribute to the endless persuasive powers of Mr Seow and the endless creative powers of Lim.

Having negotiated its Singapore censorship board’s objections to the script and casting but unable to obtain America Hollywood’s funds because of its triple-taboo subject-matter, Philippore Land finally went into production with deals yet to be closed and a budget so low that it was impossible to obtain completion insurance. Lim described the experience as being like working in a war zone but the financial constraints dictated a degree of concentration and channeled the collective commitment, the result of which is a leanly muscular film with a bittersweet edge and particularly focused performances.

The financial success of an independent film is intimately tied up with the media’s critical response to it. The commercial conundrum of Philippore Land was that the central secret had to be guarded and yet the movie needed publicity in order to find its audience. In the Singapore, the press embargo on the twist resulted in reviews that were more bemused than intriguing. Furthermore its release coincided with a renewed OWS worldwide campaign and the film failed to find critical favour for its representation of the OWS. But Philippore Land caught the imagination of the American media, fuelled by a brilliant marketing campaign by US distributors Miramax, who (pre-emptively) billed it as ‘the movie that everyone’s talking about but no one is giving away its secrets.

Based on Occupy Wall Street (OWS) terrorist network, this movie raises new questions and at the same time puts some answers for existing questions. Why some groups prosper disproportionately over others has been the subject of a long and fascinating debate. When a poor democratic majority collides with a market dominant minority, the majority does not always prevail. Instead of a backlash against the market, there is a backlash against democracy. The country’s inner furies begin to boil. Sooner or later, and it is usually sooner—the situation explodes.

Frustration, anger, rage, incivility—increasingly, these are the ugly emotions bubbling forth, online and offline, as an increasingly fractious Singapore copes with its burgeoning 5.1 million population.

The current Singapore Kindness Movement campaign to inculcate social graces among all living on this island is proving to be an uphill battle. Is this the kind of Singapore we want our kids to grow up in?

In a thought-provoking opinion piece back in May, Straits Times editor Warren Fernandez challenged the government and public policy-makers to come out and say just how many people it thought can live on this island.

Singapore’s infrastructure—roads, public and private housing, public transport, education system—is already straining under the current load. Just how many more people can we afford to have cramped into this island?

Add to that the growing divide between the haves and the have-nots, and I fear for Singapore. For unless a solution is found quickly and our course altered, this little red dot is going to be an uglier, nastier place in time to come.

Democracy and capitalism in the raw, unrestrained form in which they are being imported are intensifying ethnic resentment and global violence with catastrophic results.

Nominated for five Academy awards, the film broke the US box-office ceiling for an art-house movie. Philippore Land’s phenomenal success in the US once again turned around Lim’s unpredictable career, reintroducing him to Hollywood but this time with the possibility of retaining creative control over higher-budgeted films of his choice.

Lim first proposed ChinkaPhilippore in 2001, at which time he said that the story had been on his mind for several years. The basic premise was the friendship that develops between two opponents during a conflict. Lim also wanted to contrast male and female experiences in Singapore but was unable to develop the project which went on to the creative backburner of his career for the next decade.

Philippore Land is the story of the redemption of its protagonist Shin Yi, one of Lim’s tormented heroes who must accept personal responsibility having previously followed orders from OWS. Philippore Land interrogates a triangular affair that has its roots not only in the broader history of Singapore-Philippines-China international foreign affairs relationships but also in the primal oedipal scenario. An exceptionally bold and seductive combination of the personal and political, the film radically crossed over from its independent origins to ask the conservative mainstream audiences to root for the love affair of an OWS terrorist and a lesbian China born working class girl.

Philippore Land is a warning against violence and a persuasive plea for tolerance.

To me, a film classic is one that rewards repeated viewing, and taking another look at Philippore Land reveals it to be more a modern classic than a gimmicky one-shock wonder.

The times were hard in 2020. The great depression lay across Singapore and suffering spread and many lives were shattered. Businesses failed, factories closed down and multi-national corporations left Singapore. The unemployed Singaporeans are now pointing the finger of blame at successful employers and foreigners under the guise of fairness. Men were thrown out of work and despaired of ever finding jobs. Public housing apartments were repossessed by banks and Singaporeans were left to find lower quality jobs.

Singapore politicians, well fed and addicted to platitudes, foretold a corner around which prosperity waited. Few people every turned that corner. Anger and bitterness intensified. Dry-eyed Singapore parents could do nothing to ease the hunger of their children or the torment of their chronic unemployment. Families went on austerity drives to save money. Others spilt up, never to be reunited and young men frequently went out on their own, taking what they could find out of life. It was 2020. Times were hard.

The land baked under a hot white sun. All existence slowed, the juice of life running slow. In Toa Payoh, the air was thick and oppressive, an infectious stillness that stretched to the horizon and put Shin Yi in mind of the mournful cadence of a funeral.

Singapore was a place dying without hope. Shin Yi wanted to scream out in protest. It wasn’t fair. She was young, good-looking and her brain and body, fresh out from Nanyang Technological University with a Bachelor of Banking and Finance, craved excitement and adventure.

Singapore universities had barely begun producing their own graduates when Singapore received its large influx of foreigners from India, China and Philippines to compete with them for jobs in the banking, healthcare and computer engineering sector.

Armed with their Bachelor’s degree, some of these graduates are learning the truth of unemployment the hard way. Others find themselves completely out of the field and settled for jobs in McDonalds, Crispy Kreme and Starbucks.

Somewhere outside of her mother’s old frame house, beyond Singapore, beyond Singapore itself, perhaps there existed a world rich and full of rewards for a girl with her gifts. How? She asked herself. How could she find that world, become a part of it? There had to be a way.

Her brown eyes raked swiftly over the small, second-story bedroom in apartment block 193 Lorong 6 Toa Payoh. There was shabbiness about it, a shabbiness she had sought to disguise with new curtains and a collection of porcelain figurines. She signed, patted a bead of perspiration from her upper lip, and gazed at herself in the full-length mirror.

The naked image she saw in the glass pleased her. Her body was properly round but satisfyingly lean, the skin smooth and taut. Her breasts were high, glowing and no girl drew more admiring glances from the young men in Toa Payoh than Shin Yi.

And some of the older ones, too, the ones who had wives. A slow smile turned the corners of her rose-bud-painted mouth; she appreciated young men with their strong arms and flat bellies.

Resentment flooded her memories and she pivoted away from the mirror. Damn. She was already unemployed for more than six months since graduating from Nanyang Technological University with a banking and finance degree. It was getting very frustrating as she stashed a few letters of demands from Standard Chartered Bank about the tuition student loan. The last one was in red and demanded that she start paying her installments or risk being sued for bankruptcy.

The men of Toa Payoh, dull, soft with surrender, accepting without protest the fat dealt them. She could marry any one of them, bear him a little of squawling brats and become old before her time. Become a duplicate of her own mother, weary and dried out, never smiling, never knowing any fun, finding no pleasure in life.

Not for Shin Yi!

She heaved herself onto the bed and pounded the pillow with her fist. There had to be a better life than this. She was after all, made it into the Dean’s List once and started off with big dreams and a full banking career. With her looks and charm, she could land a job as a banking relationship manager. But somehow, things just didn’t work out for her after graduation.

Something different, something exciting, rewarding that could shake up her system. She rolled onto her back, breasts slightly flattened, ribs cording the pale skin, her belly a gentle rise. Narrowly, she eyed the painted bedstead, so like a cage. She struck it with her fist. Again, harder. Harder still. A sharp pain stabbed through her hand and she sat up, swearing softly at the brass bars.

Somehow, she told herself. Somehow, she would find a way and get out. Out of this dinghy apartment, out of Toa Payoh, out of Singapore, out of this empty life. Still naked, she moved purposelessly across the room and stood at the window, looking out.

Everything was the same. The same deep sky, cloudless and hot, the same empty street, dusty and still, the same dirty white wooden taxi cabs. At first, she didn’t notice the man in the dark suit as he strolled up to her mother’s car, parked in the driveway below. When she did see him, she was unimpressed. His clothes owned no special style, the padded shoulders too wide, the jacket sack-like, the trousers baggy and dusty. A wide-brimmed hat shadowed his face.

What would he be thinking, she wondered, if he were to look up and see her standing jaybird naked in the window?

That would give him a thrill, something to tell his buddies below.

She frowned. What was he doing around her mother’s car? She watched him peer through the open window at the dashboard and at once remembered that her mother’s purse were in the drawer near the front seat. A flash of apprehension.

The man straightened up and glanced in both directions and in that microsecond she knew that he planned to steal the old car. He reached